So I am primed to look for signs from God. As a child at a fundamentalist church, I was taught that God would try to communicate with me through signs and symbols in dreams, yes, but also in the real world.
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Guideposts magazine (a sort of "Reader's Digest but more explicitly for white Christians" publication) even had a segment called "His Mysterious Ways," in which coincidences and other eerie moments of happenstance were rebranded as The Hand of God.
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Mostly, I was taught to look for God telling me what NOT to do, warning me away from courses of action. Naturally, it's easy to take a look at something you might not like and conclude it's God trying to tell you to halt your current course of action. Our brains seek patterns.
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But on two occasions, I was more rattled than usual. The first time was the day after I lost my virginity. No, no, no, stick around. I'm not gonna make this weird.
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Now, I waited a LONG time to have sex. I looked at my friends, who were sleeping with each other all over the place, and concluded they were not as devoted to THE LORD as I was. In reality, my extremely gay lady brain was endlessly thrown by how NOTHING MADE SENSE.
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(It took me a while to figure out this was the case. By the time I did, I was married to a human woman, and the little Emily that lived in my brain was, like, "Well, SHE seems great. Whatever we're doing is, uh............ We'll work on it!")
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So the first time I had sex was a total accident. When it was over, I screeched, panicked, "But that was mutually unsatisfying!!" I was so primed for sex to be Ultimate Pleasure or Ultimate Sin, and instead it was just kind of... confusing.
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Anyway, that night, as I drifted off to sleep, I asked God to SEND ME A SIGN. If I had committed a grave and grievous sin, he would tell me, right? Welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll......
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So I had a verse of the day calendar, by which I mean a calendar that showed a new Bible verse every day. The morning after losing my virginity, the morning after that prayer, I flipped over the page to see... A verse about avoiding all forms of sexual immorality. Uhhh...
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I PANICKED. Called my girlfriend. Told her all about it. She said, a little hurt but also kind of, like, amused, "Well, if GOD says so..." But it didn't take. Within a week, we were hooking up again. Whatever brief fear the calendar had put into me was quickly washed away.
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(I put a version of this story into Thorns, the script that Libby and I have been slowly pushing toward production for a few years, and people are always, like, "Wow, that's too much" until I tell them that, no, it really, really happened.)
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But, like, teenage sexual escapades -- God's seen it all, right? Whatever his disappointment, he probably was, like, so happy that I just let out some of that pent-up energy that was all locked up in............ Oh, right, working hard not to be a girl. Right. Sign from God 2.
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I never met my biological father. Depending on who you talk to, he was a saint or a cad. As with most of us, the truth is probably in the middle somewhere. He looked a little like guy me, but tall and thin, where I had been broad and overweight.
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In the mid-2000s, he died of an undiagnosed heart condition, despite otherwise being in the peak of health. I only found out about a month after it happened. His kids have since become part of my life, but I never met HIM. It haunts me. (Link! https://www.vox.com/2016/8/9/12385772/hamilton-broadway-musical …)
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A few years after my bio dad died, a combination of unexamined gender dysphoria, adoption trauma, and fundamentalist Christian hangover (the ol' TRIPLE THREAT) sent me to therapy with a man with a ridiculous name. I will call him Bram. (Not his real name.)
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I walked in to Bram's office to meet him and... He looked... EXACTLY... Like my biological father. E X A C T L Y.
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(I still see Bram to this day! He's a good therapist! He's the first person I came out to.) But in the moment, I thought I was seeing some weird manifestation of my innermost desires, like I'd wandered into Fantasy Island.
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We sit down and talk, and one session becomes another becomes another becomes another. There are breaks in there where I proclaim myself "cured," and he never pushes too hard at me when I admit I'd really rather be a girl, all things considered. The process takes YEARS.
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But in the spring of 2015, I reach a crisis point. Being alive as a man is slowly eating me away from the inside. I'm monstrously overweight, my friendships have atrophied, and my marriage is pleasant but boring.
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And Vox Media announces it will add trans affirming care to its health plan. And I realize IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. I can be the glorious girl reporter I am in my brain. I just have to take the first step. I have to tell Bram. But I can do this. We've been preparing.
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As I drive to therapy that day, I feel the ocean trying to drown out the very clear, small voice in my brain that says, "THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO." What will happen to my marriage? My family? My job? My friendships? What? But I have to say it. I'm a girl. I HAVE to.
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I walk up to Bram's office, prepared, steel in my spine. But there's a sign on the door. He's not seeing patients that day. Last second illness.
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I crumple. I'm a paper bag without anything in it. I start to cry so hard, there in the hallway, outside Bram's office. I walk from the medical complex down to a nearby dog beach. As the dogs run around me, I feel numb. I know I can never say the words now. The moment is gone.
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(CW JUST FOR THIS TWEET -- SUICIDAL IDEATION) I start to look out at the waves, and I wonder if anybody would stop me if I walked out into them. Would anyone give a shit if I died? My phone buzzes. One of my reporters needs an edit. So I do that instead. I live.
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The act of doing my job drags me back from the cliff, but it also reburies that small, clear voice. Trans womanhood is good for other people, but not for me. I will never have the strength to do this. But none of that -- not the illness, not the edit -- was the sign from God.
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A few days later, one of Bram's colleagues calls me to tell me he won't be seeing patients for several months. He had a heart attack. He barely survived. This man who looks so much like my father had the SAME undiagnosed heart condition that my father died from.
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If I hadn't already been warned away from Emilyhood, well, that would have done the trick. I actually said, "Fine, God. You win." Out loud. To a God I barely believed in. God was apparently willing to strike down this random figure in my life to prove I should be a man.
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But you know what? Bram lived. He got a new heart. His new heart works beautifully. He and his boyfriend (because, yes, Bram is gay, a thing I found out TEN YEARS IN TO OUR THERAPY TOGETHER) bought a new place together after he survived that scare.
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We kept talking. I kept getting stronger. I kept finding my way to the light. In March 2018, I told Bram I was a woman. He said, "I thought you might be, but I didn't want to pry." He lived, but so did I.
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